Meta:

I’m still behind on blogging what I’m currently working on. There’s plenty of new photos in the build section of the gallery and I’ll eventually get some down time and catch up.

I finally unwrapped the remaining blue parts I painted over the weekend. They came out okay, but not great. The power coupler shown below had some paint leak underneath the tape and I had to clean it up. I used my old friend “Acetone” who seems to work great on a lot of stuff these days, like oozing silicon and epoxy. I just have to remember to use it in a well ventilated space.

The tape also lifted up a chunk of paint on one of power couplers, but I think it’ll do for now.

Here’s the coin slot and octagon port, note the paint lifting at the edge again. I’m gonna have to learn how to do this masking right someday.

And, I couldn’t resist trying some of the parts out for size

I also assembled some of the other parts now that they’re painted. These are Daniel D’s small vents, they’re very cool and over engineered to make my life a little easier to install them. They should be a snap to get into the frame.

On the other hand, the large side vents don’t have any screws to hold the plate in place. I’ve tried silicon to hold them together, but I’m not sure if it’s going to hold and I may need to try epoxy. I’m hoping to bond a bracket to the back to allow me to screw it to the frame somehow.

I decided to redo the front vent louvers. I’d originally hot glued the pieces together, but it didn’t hold so I borrowed another trick from Victor and used some silver foil tape instead. I’ve no idea why I had this in my tool bag, but I did and it saved me my daily trip to Ace Hardware 🙂

This stuff is super sticky and seems to hold the structure together really well. I’m not sure if you can see it in the picture but along the sides and corners are strips of the silver foil tape.

Click on the image to see a close up shot.

Once the piece is flipped around and in place you’ll not be able to see the tape

I also forgot to post this photo a few weeks ago where I sanded down the surface of the front vent surrounds. I’m pretty sure these are water cut or something, and the finish will be beaded when you get them – they look more like they’ve been painted with rattle can aluminum paint instead. A quick once over with some sandpaper fixes it.

In closing here’s a quick photo of a bunch of parts ready to install in the skins